Thousands wait for word from Boulder flood's 'unaccounted for'

More than 200 people still haven't checked in with loved ones

Officials ask that if you were stranded and have reached a place of safety, call the Boulder Office of Emergency Management's hotline at 303-413-7730 to let authorities know you are OK.

If you have self-evacuated, call the same number to report your status.

Dick Easter hasn't heard from his good friend Bob Kendall in days. No response by landline, cell phone or email.

Kendall lives with his wife along the North St. Vrain Creek, west of Lyons, and Easter can't stop thinking that the worst may have happened to his buddy of 40 years after floodwaters inundated the small town at the edge of the mountains and forced the evacuation of hundreds.

"I'm afraid from what I've seen that his house is gone," said Easter, a retired Regional Transportation District bus driver from Boulder. "My concern is he didn't get out."

Easter is just one of thousands of people left wondering about the whereabouts of friends and loved ones after the skies opened up over Colorado and dumped more than 16 inches of rain on parts of Boulder County between Monday and Sunday. The resulting floods washed out bridges and roads and downed power lines and cell phone towers, especially in the foothills, cutting off small towns such as Lyons and Jamestown from the rest of the world and leaving hundreds of residents unable let others know they are OK.

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As of Sunday night, Boulder County officials said the number of people unaccounted for in the county is 235. Sheriff Joe Pelle said the total doesn't necessarily represent people who are definitively missing, but those who simply have not made contact with anyone.

"This information concerns the people who care for someone but can't account for them," Pelle said.

But he warned that the number of unaccounted for residents fluctuates frequently as new people are added to the list or folks report in as no longer missing. Pelle urged those who reported someone missing who then hears from that person to alert county officials at 303-413-7730. Same goes for those who manage to evacuate themselves without help from search and rescue teams, he said.

In the meantime, his office has sent 10 detectives into the foothills to go door to door to locate people who have dropped off the radar.

"They are actively working with search and rescue in the field to go to these addresses," Pelle said.

His biggest frustration was the inability to get helicopters back into the air Sunday after rainy weather moved back into the Front Range and dramatically dropped the cloud cover over the mountains.

"The major thing we're dealing with is frustration -- frustration that we can't fly," the sheriff said. "Eighty percent of what we are trying to accomplish can only be done by air, and pilots and crews are sitting on their hands."

Rusty Pinkerton, a Longmont resident, said if only those choppers could fly by his best friend's home on Blue Mountain Road, they would spot Zia Maiz and bring him out. He hasn't heard from Maiz since Friday morning and waited at LifeBridge Christian Church, an evacuation center for stranded flood victims, on Sunday in case he showed up there.

"It's very hard dealing with an unknown, not knowing one way or the other," Pinkerton said. "We're just sitting on pins and needles."

That's how Feliz Gutierrez felt after she lost contact with her 68-year-old father, Benito Chavez, on Thursday afternoon, after he went camping with five buddies at Beaver Reservoir west of the Peak to Peak Highway. She said the flooding had washed out Boulder County Road 96 leading to the reservoir and her father, a Vietnam vet who lives in Longmont, was stuck there with dwindling food supplies and none of his medication.

"My dad is the primary caretaker of my mother, who has Parkinson's," Gutierrez said. "He's a survivor, but at his age you would worry about anybody."

Late Sunday, she said she heard that volunteers from the Indian Peaks Fire Protection District had made contact with her father and his friends but didn't know just when they might be coming out.

Gabrielle Boerkircher, a spokeswoman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management, said her office was aware of the group of men at Beaver Reservoir but that County Road 96 had been compromised by mudslides and they were doing what they could to monitor the situation and get them out.

Pelle said locating people and bringing them to safety would continue to be the primary mission of search and rescue personnel countywide, at least for the next few days. The weather is expected to improve, with warmer temperatures and less moisture, going into the week.

"Getting to everyone in our county is the No. 1 priority we are trying to accomplish -- everything else is secondary to that," he said.

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